I played with a coworkers Rio S50 earlier today, and I am impressed. The little device had so many things hidden away in the software, and getting around was easy. The screen also displayed an impressive amount of info.

Overall, it seems like a good solid state player, and it uses standard memory formats (MMC) for expansion.

One thing I couldn't figure out though, can it use the SD cards? I can't find any 256mb MMC cards, but 256mb SD cards exist.

are SD and MMC the same format?

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btw, to the empeg guys...

what was the deciding factors to use MMC instead of CF, which can go up to 1gig nowadays?

Objection, Asked and Ansewered. Size - the players couldn't be as small as they are with compact flash...

the players couldn't be as small as they are with compact flash...

I've seen the S50. I think that if cleverly designed, it could have been the same size and accepted a CF card. I think there were other engineering reasons for the choice other than size.

are SD and MMC the same format?

They're the same except that SD cards are allowed to be slightly thicker (that's why big capacities only come in SD).

Peter

it could have been the same size and accepted a CF card

I dunno, those things (especially S30/S35) are pretty full, and this sort of device needs a good strong (thick) shell in case of being dropped etc.

Peter

If you install version 1.20 of the software (available from the sonicblue support site) it will work with SD cards. We have tested with cards up to 512MB so far.

Rob

CF could perhaps have been squeezed into an S10/S50, but not an S30/S35. Clearly products of this nature are going to continue decreasing in size so having dropped the unpopular proprietry backpacks it seems very sensible to go with the smallest format commonly available.

Rob

In fact there are many differences. The one that is of most consumer interest is that SD is much faster than MMC.

Rob